


Ice, Not Concrete, Shoes

by Firelight_and_Rain



Series: Icewind Dale [4]
Category: The Legend of Drizzt Series - R. A. Salvatore
Genre: Angst, Background Montolio DeBrouchee/Zaknafien Do'Urden, Crime, Gen, Modern AU, Murder, Past Abuse, small town AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-25
Updated: 2016-11-25
Packaged: 2018-09-02 02:07:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8647573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Firelight_and_Rain/pseuds/Firelight_and_Rain
Summary: A new visitor comes to town.Too bad no one bothers to communicate when guns are involved.(Alas, the Mature rating isn't for anything sexual).





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [salamandercity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/salamandercity/gifts), [felixthecat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/felixthecat/gifts), [Tzig](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Tzig).



> Well, this turned out ... a lot darker than initially expected, but I'm not sure what I was expecting.
> 
> You know, I shouldn't be so surprised that Jarlaxle and Artemis manage to be each others' worst problems even with the best intentions and Herzgo Alegni in the mix.
> 
> Content warnings: Murder, gun violence, fist violence, lying, endangerment, illicit body-dumping, allusions to past rape, allusions to past relationship abuse, my attempt at describing a disassociative episode, internalized ableism in Zak's PoV, my attempt at describing general trauma on mindset, potentially domestic abuse between Artemis and Jarlaxle, a general critical eye towards Jarlaxle's past and current behavior while continuing to write him as a protagonist of this little series. (I didn't put the "graphic depictions of violence" tag on this story because compared to most sword and sorcery writers, my prose really skimps on the details).
> 
> So, yeah, I brought All This to my nice little modern AU, hope you ... enjoy this pile of distress that is totally not what you're used to from me?
> 
> But here: it doesn't have a TWD conclusion.

Jarlaxle walked in on Artemis destroying his SIM card with a hammer. He debated telling his roommate that if whoever’d prompted him to destroy his phone (again) already knew where he was, the phone wasn’t actually the problem, but he decided that that would be unproductive. He liked that word. Unproductive. It pissed off assholes just as much as saying “stupid” did, but left him in the clear. It didn’t piss off Artemis. Either he’d reveal the logic of what he was doing, as illogical as that logic might be, or he’d stop doing the unproductive thing, chasing after his own sort of self-improvement with the desperation of an infatuated suitor.

After a few moments of Jarlaxle leaning against the very nice marble counter in silence, sipping at his fruit juice, Artemis volunteered; “I need to drop off the grid for awhile.”

“And here I’d thought we were already off the grid,” Jarlaxle said, mildly.

Artemis waved the hammer to gesticulate with it, but stopped himself and just held it in the air. “Not according to Alegni, we’re not.”

“Alegni … now, why does that name sound familiar?” Jarlaxle wasn’t obfuscating, not this time. The name did sound familiar, but he didn’t know why, though he did have an inkling; though since everyone he knew long-term was some kind of slimy, it wasn’t a useful one.

Artemis shot him a disbelieving look. “One of my ex-handlers. I think he tried to buddy up with your crew once.”

“Ah. What did he say?”

“Nothing obvious, but I heard the threat loud and clear.”

“Do we have a time scale?”

 

“No.”

 

“I hate the weather here,” Jarlaxle shivered dramatically, “but I think it might be time for a camping trip, don’t you?”

 

“He also threatened Dahlia.”

 

“Ah.”

 

“And Drizzt, I think.”

 

“For your previous entanglement?”

 

Artemis shrugged. “Can’t think of another reason, unless Malice has enlisted the Netherese now.”

 

Jarlaxle smiled. “Well, Clan Battlehammer is unlikely to like you even less than they already do, but the same can’t be said of their regard for Herzgo.”

 

“We can’t do that. I don’t think Drizzt would turn me in for my old … acquaintances, but none of his friends like me as much as he does.” Artemis gave a rictus grin at that, still subdued by the standards of anyone else’s anger, or bitterness, condescension or regret. Jarlaxle enjoyed puzzles, and there were few more excellent ones than the shadows on the wall made by the broken pieces of Artemis Entreri’s psyche.

 

Jarlaxle ran a hand over his face. He wasn’t dying over this, and Artemis wasn’t either, and for either of them to land in intensive car would make them too vulnerable; not to mention that Icewind Dale’s idea of medicine often had a lot more to do with hot chicken soup than IVs.

 

“I’ll give Kimmy a call,” he said.

 

“You do that,” Artemis said, while cleaning up the counter.

 

“And, Artemis?” He didn’t pause after the name, because while it would be etiquette for any other friend, Artemis would hear it like an obscure command - for attention, it didn’t matter, only the game of provocation did. “Do give Dahlia and Drizzt friendly warning. The enemy of our enemy is a friend.”

 

*

 

Dahlia found Artemis Entreri slouched inside the doorway of her apartment building. She didn’t say anything right away, but gave him a little smile and opened the door, leading him down the hallway. Entreri didn’t smile back, but he wasn’t frigid, and he wasn’t sad. That was close enough.

 

“Is this a booty call, or do you have something to say?” She was only mostly joking.

 

(When Jarlaxle had dared flirt with her while she’d lived with them, Entreri had about thrown him out of his own house. It hadn’t been about possessiveness. She’d found Jarlaxle fun, but had accepted Entreri’s actions when she saw that he was just laying down his own boundaries. She hadn’t come onto him, because of that. But she considered the assumptions changed once she’d moved out.).

 

Entreri had never leered - sexually - at anyone in his life, she was pretty sure, but coming onto him seemed to prompt either a thorny wall of derisive hostility or an unnervingly calculating once-over. (Jarlaxle was the exception. His antics prompted mockery and teasing, none of it quite hiding the warmth most people wouldn’t think Entreri capable of). Ever since Dahlia’d moved out of his immediate circumstances, she’d warranted the once-overs. They hadn’t gone anywhere, yet. But she was confident that he was considering it. (Previously, any hint of flirtation had chased him out of the room).

 

Did she want him? She liked being near him, he made her feel safe, even if maybe he shouldn’t. And his loose black curls looked absolutely lovely to run one’s fingers through, and maybe no one ever had.

 

“I need to talk to Do’Urden.”

 

Dahlia looked at him, surprised at the request, and got her phone out. She navigated to Drizzt’s number - one of relatively few - and handed it to Entreri.

 

*

 

Jarlaxle figured that Entreri would be out of the house for awhile.

 

He sank into his favorite chair and called up Kimmy on Facetime.

 

Since Kimmuriel was in the underdark and the lion’s share of smartphones were not equipped with infravision, there was really no point to it, but it helped to convince his second that he was too ga-ga over the surface to worry about. He was like a vestigial limb. Not really - there was a reason that Jarlaxle had gone to the lengths he had to give his house the strongest cell reception in arguably the entire region - but it served his purposes to let Kimmy let the metaphorical vestigial limb flop about uselessly.

 

Also Kimmuriel hated Facetime.

 

“Jarlaxle,” the black screen said, just this side of sullen.

 

“Kimmy,” Jarlaxle said brightly.

 

“Is there something you want? Do you have news?”

 

“I need to get into contact with a certain Herzgo Alegni. Do you remember him?”

 

There was a thoughtful silence from the other end. “Yes. A minor player.”

 

“Well, that’s good. I have a message for him, from De’Aerthe. And if you have something to say, text, don’t call.” In code. That part needn’t be spelled out.

 

“I’d guessed,” Kimmuriel said dryly. “Have you placed yourself in danger?”

 

Jarlaxle dragged his perfectly tended nails across the left arm of the chair, a nervous gesture. But his right hand, holding the phone, was perfectly steady. “If I have, I’m sure I’ll land back on my feet.”

 

*

 

Dahlia and Entreri were waiting for him at the park. Drizzt parked a few blocks down - he wanted the walk - and found them sitting stiffly on a park bench. Entreri’s oddly impressive resistance to the weather was evident - he was wearing his favorite light weather jacket, his hands stuffed into the pockets. Dahlia was dressed more sensibly, which dwarfed her with synthetic fluff and water-resistant material. Dahlia had dozed off. Entreri moved to touch his shoulder to hers. She woke.

 

“Well?” Drizzt asked.

 

Entreri looked up at him. “Someone new is coming to town. I thought you might want to know.”

 

Drizzt frowned in confusion. “Someone I know?”

 

“Probably not. Someone I know - someone Jarlaxle and I know.”

 

“Are you asking for asylum?”

 

Entreri looked to the side of Drizzt. “I guess I am.”

 

“You know that the drunk tank won’t be enough for your crowd, or moreso Jarlaxle’s, and if you do something to get yourself shipped out of town then there’s nothing I can do to help you.”

 

“Well, then what would you do in my situation?” Entreri snapped.

 

“Well, I’d go sleep on Bruenor’s couch. But I think you have an option here.” It wasn’t much of one, Drizzt admitted to himself, but Entreri couldn’t expect better.

 

“And? I’m assuming it’s not Bruenor.”

 

“Staying with a relative of mine. But you’d better not piss him off while you’re there.” Drizzt grinned, baring his teeth. Entreri looked suspicious.

 

*

 

“Jarlaxle,” his phone said, grumpily.

 

“Yes, my dearest friend?” Jarlaxle said, dropping sprinkles into the cookies he’d just made. He loved sugar. Entreri disapproved of his sugar habit, claiming that it made him even more obnoxious than usual. Jarlaxle’d responded that he was already as much himself as he could be; a surface confection, however wonderful, couldn’t change that.

 

“I’m getting myself arrested.”

 

“Well, this is new. I assume you’re going to our dear friend Drizzt for that service?”

 

“You’ll get the full tale when I’m back from prison.”

 

“You are, of course, remaining in the Dale, yes?”

 

“Of course.”

 

“Not much of a prison.”

 

“Hopefully I won’t need one.”

 

“Of course not.” Jarlaxle seconded Entreri’s secular, desperate sort of unsaid prayer, silently, although he bothered to direct it to a (in his case lower) power.

 

He waited until Entreri hung up.

 

He dialed a different number.

 

*

 

Despite its isolation, Icewind Dale had attracted our heroes - and our villains - partly, at least, for its reputation for “keeping our noses out of your business”-ness. Herzgo Alegni hadn’t known about this trait, having had no reason to pay attention to a backwoods sub-arctic town, but he was pleased to take full advantage of it. Usually, someone so suspicious-seeming wouldn’t go and approach a jail before making any friends. Alegni thought that norms did not apply to him.

 

“I’m looking for a friend of mine,” Alegni said with a smile.

 

“I’m sure you are,” the man in the all-weather jacket and flannel said from behind a desk. He wore a badge. That didn’t matter.

 

*

 

The imposing man behind Jarlaxle - Jarlaxle, who was continuing to make lunch - looked down at his phone, which had dinged. Jarlaxle saw his expression in the very shiny backboard of his very shiny kitchen.

 

Jarlaxle, without any hesitation, spun around, tried to kick the goon’s ankles out from under him, and at the same time flung vinegar at his opponent’s eyes.

 

The fight was going well until more of Alegni’s goons showed up to join the action. Someone had moved the gun he kept hidden in the kitchen, and the piano wire was too far away, and he hadn’t replaced the mace since he’d given the last one to Dahlia - he tried not to assume that the person who’d so thoughtlessly moved the gun was Artemis. Tried to assume that it had been carelessness.

 

There just was no trust left in modern business.

 

*

 

Abil  
Asuming ur aliv  
Am kidnapped  
At house  
Help  
Il ow u 1

 

*

 

“What the fuck,” Dahlia said, sitting in the one coffee shop in Icewind Dale. When Entreri had slipped her his phone, she hadn’t expected anyone to call her - she’d expected Entreri and Jarlaxle to have sorted out anything they needed sorting out ahead of time, with their weird talent for synchronicity, and so she’d expected to treat it like a paperweight. Her bones felt electrified by the message. It was tangential to the worst reminder she could be subjected to. She took a drink of her coffee, pressing the bone of her front teeth against her coffee cup.

 

She left before finishing her coffee, leaving herself time for a detour to her small apartment.

 

*

 

Dahlia had, for a considerable while, been trying to be normal. She knew she couldn’t do it alone, but she’d be damned if reached out for some sort of community before distilling herself in relative isolation. Even though Jarlaxle and Artemis were almost different. That was why she was doing this.

 

She collected her mace and her knives. She didn’t have a gun - hadn’t had one since moving up to the Dale.

 

*

 

She parked several blocks away from Jarlaxle’s cottage. Thanked nothing in particular for his weakness for the cosmopolitan lifestyle. Took a good look at her levels of adrenaline, and pulled her hood low over her face, and approached the house. She didn’t approach it right out - went to walk by it. That probably saved her. She saw the two shadows - much taller and broader than any drow. She sat down on a bench across from the house and brought up her phone in front of her face. Angled it at the window across from her - she figured that anyone looking at her, seeing a young woman, would see someone taking a selfie. Then she magnified the picture as much as she could and looked for more details. A holster. A baseball bat. A - ah, there. The edge of a chair towards the center of the room, where a chair usually had no business being. She, quite casually, tapped out a message to her cop friend on her cellphone, even though her cop friend was not actually a cop.

 

She got up and walked to her car. She didn’t look back. She didn’t see the third silhouette move in a telling way.


	2. Chapter 2

Drizzt met her, in his beat up truck, by the coffee shop. He didn’t get out of the truck, just nudged the passenger side door open. She got in as quickly as she could. “Does this have something to do with what Entreri’s running away from?” he asked, eyes on traffic, trying to sound neutral and mostly succeeding. 

 

“Yeah, I assume so. There’s only so much bad luck one guy can expect.”

 

“I’ve known Entreri longer than you have. Don’t count on it.”

 

“Drizzt-”

 

A hum in acknowledgement.

 

“I think we’re being followed.”

 

Drizzt said something, not quite mumbled it, in Undercommon. Dahlia didn’t understand it, and would be surprised if it were up to her standards of swearing, but doubted that it was complimentary.

 

“Let’s just hope that they’re not used to mud roads.”

 

Dahlia looked significantly at where she assumed his (non-euphemistic) holster was. “Do you have a spare firearm? I know, don’t play cowboy, but I’m guessing these guys are playing for keeps.” She decided not to mention Jarlaxle. Sure, she’d miss his company, but for the moment being she was concerned about her own hide, and Drizzt was her ride away from the immediate danger, and she couldn’t be sure that Drizzt wouldn’t turn right around if he thought one of his acquaintances - not even his damn friend! - was in trouble.

 

Drizzt shifted his jacket to expose the holder. “Only while I’m driving. I’ve been told that I’m a pretty crack shot.” He smiled to himself.

 

*

 

Dahlia was almost more scared of the safehouse she was brought to than the mysterious likely-criminals (did it matter?) that they were fleeing. She’d certainly never seen it before. It was hours away from town proper, or town improper, on a densely wooded slope some minutes from one of the lakes. It looked like the corpse of some small primeval creature, from where she first saw it through the snowy trees. It was the brown and green and grey of the illicit lovechild of an aluminum trailer and a rotting log. She didn’t have much time to contemplate it. The moment Drizzt threw the truck in park he was out the door and slinking up to the shack, and she gave up in the stealth and tried to run - no snowplows here - to relative safety.

 

The door was locked and the darkness instead was thoroughly obscuring. She banged on the glass panes, just this side of frantic. She had Drizzt’s gun in her other hand. Someone opened the door and dragged her inside. She let herself be moved, focusing on keeping her balance.

 

“Running from him?”

 

“Yes.” She didn’t know who this he was, it didn’t matter.

 

A mechanical sort of snarl, and another voice quickly approaching. “Hey! Stay where you are. Ask me in for a drink, why don’t’cha? Or I’ll … let myself in.”

 

“You’re not good at one liners,” Dahlia said at the man named Herzgo Alegni, suddenly feeling unutterably tired, and realizing that it had mattered. Entreri placed his hands on her shoulders and moved her further into the house, out of the doorway.

 

“Why don’t you?” Entreri said, standing back from the door.

 

They waited until Alegni entered the house, more a cave than a house, which served to make him look even more beastlike than Dahlia remembered him. He was, for a moment, the hot core of the universe. Dahlia made herself one with the shadow she’d been moved into and watched as the massive tiefling put his hand on her small friend’s, in his ruined grey sweater and dead eyes, shoulder. “Barrabus. It’s been so long. You know, I had to hear from a friend that you were even still alive. He was so disappointed that you’d give up on our friendship. Our arrangement. Our … social circle. It both got us a lot of what we cared about, right? You, hiding here, useless - it’s not like you, Barrabus! You had so much more to look forward to. Here, let me give you a reminder.” A hand drew back. A hand descended. A woman hiding in the shadows waited until Entreri was on his back, and the gun barked out, once, three more times. Entreri rolled out of the way of the body, suddenly animated.

 

Dahlia caught his eyes, Entreri’s eyes. “He hit you.”

 

Entreri’s hand went to the left side of his face. He’d caught the blow well. She’d had some talent at that too, once. “Aggravated assault, or assault?”


	3. Chapter 3

Dahlia and Entreri had the body dragged a few feet out of the house when someone she first took to be Drizzt rounded the edge of the house. Dahlia had to (felt she had to) shuffle further back in the show to aim Drizzt’s gun correctly when she saw that the newcomer was not, in fact, Drizzt. The newcomer held his hands up. Entreri looked up. “Dahlia, that’s my - temporary landlord.”

 

“So, who did you shoot in my house?” the newcomer asked, sounding vaguely interested more than anything else.

 

“Former crime boss. I’m no longer an employee, and that’s how it’s going to say,” Entreri said, starting about the same time as Dahlia said, “rapist piece of shit.”

 

“Alright. Drizzt?” Drizzt appeared from behind Alegni’s car. “Are we alright with this murder?”

 

Drizzt sighed, loudly. It was a very loud sigh, seeing as he was still a bit away behind the car and Entreri and Dahlia could hear him. “Yes, I think so. If he’s with the guys who just got arrested for kidnapping a citizen of my town - right, Dahlia?”

 

“Pretty sure he was,” Dahlia said, and Entreri agreed.

 

“Since any criminal worth his salt isn’t going to get prosecuted, or so I’ve been told, this seems like the practical solution. So - where are you trying to take him?”

 

“Somewhere far away?” Entreri said, sounding hassled.

 

“I know somewhere we can take him. My son and I’ll take it from here. The less people who know where the illicit body dump is, the better.”

 

Dahlia and Entreri, seeing no reason not to (if the Do'Urdens tried to cross them, they'd just incriminate themselves - it had been Drizzt's gun, among other incidental but convenient liabilities), went back inside.

 

“That’s Drizzt’s dad?”

 

“Apparently.”

 

“The one that raised him?”

 

“How should I know?”

 

“Huh. Damn, son.”

 

Entreri gave her a grave side-eye.

 

“What? He might be a crazy backwoods kook, but don’t tell me you weren’t thinking it. Apparently it runs in the family.”

 

“Damn elves,” Entreri deadpanned.

 

*

 

Entreri, who had spent those few minutes since aimlessly walking inside making coffee, said, “how far away do you think they are, now?”

 

“No idea,” Dahlia said. It wasn’t that she’d ever spent much time in the country proper. She decided to voice that thought out loud. The entire world seemed distant, and she felt that she was on the very edge of saying nothing or everything. “I spent most of my life in cities.”

 

“I did, too.” He took a drink of his coffee. He pushed it over to her. “Well, if they’re out, there’s something I need to do.”

 

“This is about Jarlaxle, isn’t it?”

 

He didn’t reply, but stopped moving.

 

“You know that Alegni would have said anything to make you feel small.” The words didn’t sound like they were coming from her; on some level she believed that Drizzt was saying them.

 

“Before I left, I told Jarlaxle that I was getting myself locked in the drunk tank. While I was here, Drizzt told his father that Alegni had gone to that exact place. Now, why wouldn’t Jarlaxle tell him?” Entreri’s voice got suspiciously high there at the end.

 

“I think -” He loves you? You’re his friend? Dahlia had never had much use for friends, and less for love, her distant, burning fantasies grotesque things that she diagnosed as clinical and maybe sometimes they blindsided her, and maybe sometimes she’d acted them out out of desperation, putting herself in a silhouette of a certain character for advantage. And she had to think. Just them against the world, no Jarlaxle, no slinky shiny undefined variable of a man in Entreri’s life. “Alegni should be nothing to him. There just shouldn’t be anything he wants that much from him.”

 

“Men like Jarlaxle don’t limit their decisions to what they actually need to do, Dahlia.”

 

That was true. Still, Jarlaxle had seemed decent enough before. Surely sometimes the patterns of expectation could fail. “I don’t think he did this,” she said, voice flat, which was as close to definitive as she could get. Her eyes felt hot, not with tears but with the last flare of her temper.

 

“Well,” Entreri said, his voice heated, “I’ll go ask him.”

 

*

 

Zak wouldn’t have payed much attention to Entreri attempting to gain entrance to the fancy car, except he appeared to be having a lot of trouble with it. “Where’s the girl?”

 

“Dahlia is still inside. She’s having some coffee.”

 

“Is that your car?”

 

Entreri obviously considered his answer. “No. But I’m not stealing your son’s truck.”

 

“Hm. That’s probably a good idea. Well, I know the tiefling didn’t have the keys, so I can’t help you steal it.”

 

Entreri narrowed his eyes. “Fuck.”

 

“I don’t think my son likes leaving pieces of crime scenes up for theft.”

 

“Is he going to report us?”

 

Zak thought about that. The Drizzt he’d known just coming out of childhood wouldn’t think to, but the Drizzt he was working to know now was married to his job. His perception of his job. All of this was, technically, out of his jurisdiction. “Not if he thinks that you both hated the dead guy enough for this to be worth it.”

 

“That depends, I think, on how much he was able to guess,” Entreri said.

 

Zak shrugged. “He can be perceptive, sometimes.”

 

Entreri sat on the hood of the car. “So - have to wait until he gets back?” He was put-out and trying to hide it.

 

Zak reached into his pocket and withdrew it with a key dangling on one of his fingers. “Well, you could take my car if you tell me why you’re in such a hurry to leave.”

 

“My roommate told Alegni where I was supposed to be.”

 

“Alegni was the tiefling?”

 

Entreri smiled, briefly, at the past tense. “Yes.”

 

Zak started to walk towards his truck. Entreri got up and followed him. “This roommate of yours - are you sure that he wasn’t forced into what he did?”

 

“I’ve never known him to be forced into anything.”

 

“In normal circumstances?”

 

“Oh, believe me, he doesn’t have normal circumstances.”

 

“If you believed him capable of something like that, why live with him?”

 

Zak wouldn’t know that Entreri had the perfect lie waiting. “I think I didn’t want to believe it.”

 

“That’s the most dangerous person of all; our own sentiments,” Zak agreed, thinking that maybe there were more interesting people in the world than the handful he’d come to know - or at least more sympathetic people. Drizzt had been hinting that maybe his worldview was inherently flawed. Zak didn’t agree or disagree; usually he had more important things to think about, like what the weather was going to be like, or what permits he need this year and why, or how he’d respond to Mooshie’s latest attempt at partner therapy, or just Mooshie in general.

 

Entreri gave Zak a smile. It didn’t feel genuine, but then nothing Entreri did felt genuine. Zak wasn’t bothered. Honesty, he’d learned at length and painfully, was not always the best policy.

 

“Not a mistake I intend to keep making.”

 

“But what’s there under the sentiment? Be careful of that, too; you probably won’t like what you’ll find.”

 

“Eh, I’ve known that man for awhile. He’s - I know him.”

 

“You still seem like a fairly miserable bastard, despite the zen approach.”

 

Entreri huffed and scowled to himself. “Shit takes time.”

 

“And often, some help. I’m not offering to run a halfway house, but I can tell that Drizzt cares, and I guess that means I’m rooting for you too. But know that if you’re going to get his help, then you’d better practice some patience for the people around you.” Seeing the tension Entreri was carrying, more than before, he offered; “Speaking from experience here.” He tossed his keys at Entreri. Entreri caught them without problem, almost as quick as Drizzt.

 

*

 

When Zak walked into his house, Drizzt got up from the kitchen counter and handed him a cup of coffee. It was too sweetened, but Zak didn’t care. “Thanks for lending him your car. I’ll get it back to you. He’s checking up on Jarlaxle?”

 

Zak crashed his teeth against the porcelain mug and spilled coffee on the floor. “What?”

 

Drizzt looked sheepish. “Yeah, they’re roommates. I know Jarlaxle is trouble, but I more than half wanted to strangle Entreri with a piano wire when I first met him, so.” He looked more introspective than normal for a moment. “Maybe more than roommates, not that I’m ever asking.”

 

Zak shoved the mug back at Drizzt, inelegantly, and then half-sat on the nearest chair, and laughed like the madman that he was.

 

*

 

Drizzt set the mug on the counter and looked anxiously at Dahlia, who was folded into a chair on the other side of the kitchen. Dahlia gave him an interested look, the most animation he’d seen from her since he’d come back to the house to see her and Entreri hauling a dead body across the snow. “He knew J?”

 

“Yes. Dad, is there anything about Jarlaxle that we should know?”

 

“He’s a deeply troubled man,” Zaknafien said in a curiously shrill voice, hands still over his face. “I think your friend might kill him.”

 

“Entreri isn’t my friend and, well, you didn’t,” Drizzt said, uncomfortably. Drizzt did not particularly like to think about his childhood, but he had some notion of what Zaknafien had been capable of, once upon a time. He was a little proud of it, but mostly found it regrettable.

 

“I wasn’t Entreri.”

 

“You -”

 

“I become someone like Entreri, yes, I know that. But I wasn’t him then.”

 

“He did that?”

 

“No, Malice did that. But putting my trust in the wrong person didn’t help.”

 

Drizzt stuffed his hands deep into his pockets. “He helped me.”

 

“Maybe he changed. Maybe he looked at Entreri and, somewhere along the way, changed.”

 

Or maybe he looked at you and he changed, Drizzt thought, but felt uncomfortable thinking it. Someone in Zaknafien’s place wouldn’t want to do Jarlaxle any favors.

 

“I think so,” Dahlia said. “Or at least I hope so. He’s not the kind of person I’d expect him to be, given his position.”

 

“Entreri won’t hold on hope for change,” Drizzt said.

 

“Good,” Zaknafien said.

 

*

 

It wasn’t anything obvious. He didn’t come in through the door, of course, and he knew how to pick each and every lock or obstacle installed on the house. It was more a feeling. Jarlaxle’s instincts had served him well, and he trusted them.

 

“Tell me you didn’t listen to him.”

 

“I don’t know, De’Aerthe. Why else did he find himself exactly where I told you I was going to be?”

 

“Wait … you weren’t there? How did he find you, then?”

 

There was a breathy little laugh in the dark, from somewhere behind him. “Disappointed?”

 

“I will be if I hear that he’s not in handcuffs yet, abbil.”

 

“I’ll do you one better. He’s dead. I didn’t even have to fire the gun.”

 

“That was the plan.” Jarlaxle was in rather excruciating pain from where he was still bound to the chair (which had fallen onto its side). He was trying not to get snippy with Artemis, recognizing that he was dangerously close to joining Alegni in whatever backwoods ditch he was decomposing in now. It wasn’t quite working.

 

“The plan?”

 

“Yes. I was setting him up so that he wouldn’t ever leave this town after deciding to pay you a visit.”

 

“Aw, that’s sweet,” Entreri said, sarcastically. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

 

Jarlaxle was close to saying ‘because I didn’t want you running off and spoiling it’, but thought better of it. “You didn’t exactly tell me what you were doing, either. What if Alegni thought I’d lied and come back to kill me? I’m still not sure why he didn’t, actually. Any thoughts on that? Probably just a sadist. This isn’t as comfortable as it looks, you know. Did you even get my text?”

 

“No. Why the fuck didn’t you just leave town and leave Alegni a note? I’m sure he’d have given this place a very thorough ransacking. If you were so confident I could get him arrested from behind bars myself, and you’re not lying.”

 

“I don’t like loose ends.”

 

Entreri gave a disbelieving snort, but let that one go.

 

“Also, it was more that I was counting on our resident boy scout to get Alegni arrested, not you, since he was in on all of this, yes?”

 

“He was involved. We used his gun.”

 

“With his permission?”

 

“Well, he didn’t complain after the fact.”

 

Us. That was good. Entreri and Drizzt and Dahlia were … they fit. But there was something more discomfiting than the ties after that little word. Jarlaxle looked forward to seeing how this pain progressed. He couldn’t just drive Entreri away, he already knew the topography of the resultant scar.

 

The light came on, and then Entreri was righting the chair. “You’re the most moronic crime lord I’ve ever met, and that’s saying something. And if you’re lying, might I remind you that staying here isn’t the wisest choice, though I’ll grant that I don’t expect any better from you. I can promise you that they’ll never find the body.”

 

“But we’d make such a sensational headline.”

 

“You’re never showing me off in public like that.”

 

*

 

“Where do you want to go now?” Drizzt asked Dahlia.

 

The problem was, nowhere in Icewind Dale really felt like home, nowhere except Jarlaxle’s cottage, and she planned on giving that place a wide berth for at least a week. For the moment, reality didn’t feel like home. “I don’t know.”

 

Drizzt’s stare really was rather unnerving, on the rare occasion that he looked directly at one - his irises, the color of the crocuses of springtime, which rarely lingered to brighten up the Dale, seemed to catch the light with their odd color and contrast, like snow, like the flowers flaring up out of the snow. “I have someplace you could go.”

 

“Your place?” Dahlia wouldn’t have minded - definitely no more than she minded everything else, right now.

 

“Bruenor’s place.” Drizzt had kept his hands full with food and drink, not necessarily consuming it and more often offering it, since returning from disposing of the body. “I know you don’t know him very well yet, and he can seem … unyielding, but he probably saved my life once, and his house is a good place to heal.”

 

“I’m not going on sabbatical because of this. One, I don’t need to, and two, it would look suspicious.”

 

“I think I’ve got the suspicious part covered,” Drizzt said with a grin. “I’m sure that Kemp will have a field day when he catches the slightest whiff of something odd going down, and he probably will, but we did a good job at erasing all of the most damning evidence. Most importantly, most people in the Dale just won’t care. They didn’t know the tiefling. We’ll get away with this. There are a few people I know here who’re the type to have gotten away with worse; I wouldn’t go hunting through winter cellars here unprepared.”

 

“I usually get away with things.”

 

“Then we’ll be fine. But we - me, dad, and Entreri if he’s the man I think he is, want you to get help, if you can.”

 

“I’m not leaving the Dale.”

 

“And Bruenor won’t make a fuss, and I can tell Cat to give you room.”

 

“Do they have good wi-fi?”

 

Drizzt grinned. “They have such a fancy house that Bruenor doesn’t know what half of it does.”

 

“Well, I guess someone has to take advantage of all that wealth.”

 

“Then, on Bruenor’s behalf, you’re welcome to be that person; your half of the bargain is keeping Wulfgar from breaking the universal remote again.”

 

“Wulfgar’s your unbelievably built young friend, right?”

 

Drizzt wiggled his eyebrows at her. It wasn’t very smoothly done, but very charming nonetheless.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If it makes any of this cheerier, realize that everyone in the scene trying to deal with Alegni's body is no more than about 5'5" and, if I recall correctly, Alegni himself is at least 6' and built like a brick shithouse. Awkward.
> 
> A song I came across during writing, that I found to be a good Jarlemis song: Keri Noble's "Hey Lover".


End file.
